Sex in the Snow: the Himalayas As Erotic Topos in Popular Hindi Cinema
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HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 25 Number 1 Himalaya No. 1 & 2 Article 7 2005 Sex in the Snow: The Himalayas as Erotic Topos in Popular Hindi Cinema Philip Lutgendorf University of Iowa Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Lutgendorf, Philip. 2005. Sex in the Snow: The Himalayas as Erotic Topos in Popular Hindi Cinema. HIMALAYA 25(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol25/iss1/7 This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PHILIP LUTGENDORF, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA SEx IN THE SNow: THE HIMALAYAS AS EROTIC Toros IN PoPULAR HINDI CINEMA, Fantasies about life beyond the front range of the Great Himalaya have been a trope in ln dian literature since at least the period of the Sanskrit epics. The demi-divine beings believed to inhabit the high country were famously sexually active, and even the human "northern Kurus" (as residents of the region have somet.imes been called) were rumored to have long, happy lives unburdened by inhibitions, especially in sexual matters: their women were alleg edly free to enjoy multiple extra-marital liasons and polyandrous marriages. Such legends appear to persist in popular 20th century narrative through a much-used trope in Bombay Epic and puranic cinema: the depiction of the Himalayas as a realm of uninhibited romantic fantasy. Although literature routinely this trope is often confined to virtually extra-narrative song sequences that whisk the hero and heroine to Himalayan (or lately European or even New Zealand alpine) locales, a number depicts cloud of highly successful films have given it much more extended treatment by romantically pair piercing summits ing a plains-dwelling hero with a Himalayan heroine. This article briefly traces th e history and high altitude of this scenario and then considers the contextual and cultural implications of its use in two · lakes .. .frequented notable films: Raj Kapoor's Ran1 Tcri Ganga lvlaili (1984) and Mani Ratnam's Oil Sc (1998). by scantily-clad supernaturals ... who amorously : frolic there, INTRODUCTION in the cinematic narratives that India so abundantly produces and consumes. I refer here to the association evidently immune Long before they came to be identified by modern of high mountains with romance and eroticism. For to the arctic-like geographers as the loftiest mountains on earth, the one of the standard scenic locales of song and dance high Himalayas had generated a powerful response in cold. sequences in mainstream Bombay films-along with the imaginations of people living on the lowlands to such settings as the kotha for a ghazal, the cabaret or their south. The ancient Indian understanding of the disco for a jazz or rock number, and the temple for a '' north as particularly auspicious among the cardinal bhajan-is the mountainside as venue for a lovesong. directions apparently derives from its association with Not uncommonly, a film's romantic principals the shining white summits that formed the northern are transported to a landscape of flower-covered boundary of Aryavarta and were understood to be meadows, rushing streams, and snow-capped the abode of its gods, and when Krishna, in the tenth summits, amidst which they frolic, display frequent chapter of the Blwgavad-gita, metaphorically likened changes of apparel, and coyly sing of their budding himself, as supreme being, to the highest degree of all love for one another. Not uncommonly the sequence earthly things, it was only natural for him to invoke climaxes with the pair on an icy slope, playfully the proverbial "stability" and "endurance" of the 'tossing snowballs at one another, or rolling downhill Himalaya ("sthavaranam Himalayah"; Bhagavad-gita in each other's arms. The transport of the lovers to 10:25). However, my concern in the present essay this locale may be accounted for diegetically-e.g., is with a less exalted and, so to say, more "secular" through the pretext of a mountain excursion on which understanding of these mountains that likewise has they briefly embark-but at times it is not; in the ancient roots, but that enjoys a particularly visible latter case, the first strains of what will obviously be a persistence in modern popular culture, especially love song are simply accompanied by an abrupt shift • from an urban or soundstage set to an alpine landscape-a the time during their twelve years of vanavasa or forest visual shift that is accepted by audiences, although it is also exile, they enter a landscape of pine fore sts, ice fi elds, and sometimes the butt of jokes. Indeed, the repetition of this soaring, jagged summits, some with names that (nowadays) convention in numerous films is periodically cited by critics correspond to well known peaks: Kaila sh, Hemalwta, Baelrinath who complain of the supposedly "formulaic" and "mindless" (Mahablwratd 3:109-170). Yet apparently "realistic" evocations quality of song sequences in mainstream cinema. of subalpine and alpine vegetation and rock formations are Yet a more culturally distanced observer may question regularly interspersed with highly fanciful descriptions: lush how this topos became a subtropical groves (such as "formula" in the first place. the lwdali-vana or "plantain For 1 would venture that, forest" in which Bhima in American and European encounters his immortal cinemas, although the sight half-brother Hanuman), of high mountains may ponds covered with lotuses carry certain routine as of celestial fragrance, and sociations for audiences animals (such as peacocks, (e.g., of awe-inspiring elephants, and lions) that are natural splendor, rugged not native to high altitudes. adventure, or the chal The epic mountains partake lenge of wilderness and its in a (literally) heightened dangers), it does not auto way of the surreal qualities matically evoke shringara that distinguish the literary rasa-the aesthetic mood trope of the "forest" or of eros. Why it apparently wilderness (vana, aranya, does in Hindi cinema bears Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore as the lovers in Shakti Samanta's Aradhana jangala) from that of examining. In this essay I ("Adoration"), 1969. the settled or cultivated will first consider some ap lands of city and village parent precursors of this trope in classical and pre-modern (nagara, grama), which are typically more realistically (albeit narratives-a consideration that will entail challenging the idealistically) described; they constitute an extra-social realm modern Western ideological divide between the imaginative of mystery, danger, and supernatural power, and are the realms of the "sacred" and the "secular." I will then turn haunt of divine and demi-divine beings who are "immortal" to one extended variant on the trope that has received re (or anyhow exceptionally long-lived) and potentially both peated treatment in Hindi film s: a plot in which a boy from beneficent and dangerous to human beings who stumble into the plains falls in love with a girl from the mountains, to their realm (Lutgendorf 2000:270-73, 280). examine its artful use by two notable directors. Here my ar But what does all this have to do with eros? Here we may gument will be that, as is the case with other stock conven recall that most of the supernatural beings in Hindu mythol tions of mainstream cinema, the familiarity and associations ogy are (as we say nowadays) "sexually active," and that erot of the "Himalayan love song" topos make possible not only ic sports are indeed one of the principal ways in which they its routine deployment for evoking a predictable and desired while away the eons. The immortals "play" eternally, often aesthetic mood, but also its more creative and provocative amorously, and preferably in remote locations of breathtak use in films that open up the possibility of questioning or ing natural beauty; the northern mountains, which bridge critiquing prevailing discourses 2 the gap between earthly and heavenly lolws, appear to be among their favorite worldly playgrounds. Epic and puranic literature routinely depicts cloud-piercing summits and high PLAYGROUND OF THE IMMORTALS altitude lakes as sites frequented by scantily-clad supernatu Although the Himalayas are periodically invoked in vedic rals such as voluptuous apsaras and strappinggandlwrvas and texts as the abode of the gods (eleva loha, eleva bhumi), vidyadharas - lndic mythology's party animals par excel it is only in the Sanskrit epics, and especially in the lence - who amorously frolic there, evidently immune to Mahablwrata-a number of whose principal cha~·acters the arctic-like cold. As for yahslws, their yellow-eyed king make long journeys into the high country-that we fir's t find Kubera holds sway over the famous Himalayan dream city of extended descriptions of their scenery. These are suggestive Alaka, a place where every desire is indulged. both of some firsthand observation and of a great deal of Where yal1slws dwell with lovely women in white mansions , imaginative projection and poetic license. When the heroic Whose crystal terraces reOect the stars like Oowers.They drink Pandava brothers and their common wife Draupadi, guided the